


Sang et Métal

by EverybodyKnowsIt



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Angst, Bruh I don't know either, Dirty Crime and Dirtier Cops, Global Warming, Hurt/Comfort, Languages and Linguistics, M/M, Science Fiction, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, We're serving dystopian cyberpunk urban fantasy sci-fi Realness, class conflict, proletariat gang rise up, scooby doo reveal: the villian was capitalism all along!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 22:14:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21088640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverybodyKnowsIt/pseuds/EverybodyKnowsIt
Summary: There are five things Minhyung knows to be true.Fact One: A boy from the wrong side of the canals has gone missing.Fact Two: He is-- was-- a liar and a criminal and a beast without a muzzle.Fact Three: He was the key to this drowned city's secrets, the last piece of the puzzle Minhyung needed for proof of something bigger.Fact Four: Minhyung was supposed to be the traitor that disappeared Lee Donghyuck in the middle of the night.Fact Five: He wasn't.





	Sang et Métal

_January 22nd, 2184_

_2:04 AM_

The price you pay in the drowned city is blood and metal, is what Mark always says--and with fifty pills sewn into the pocket of his wetsuit and boosted smart-alloy wire wreathed around his wrist--Donghyuck is inclined to agree, despite Mark’s sense of drama and the gentle touch of irony whenever he says it. 

The police aren’t _supposed _to be out-- Fridays are when the runners make their rounds, and the threat of Taeyong and a disappearance in the middle of the night keeps the pigs at home and quiet on the top of the hill. _Never chase a 127_, they like to joke around their cigarettes, _or you’ll never chase anyone again_. But tonight Donghyuck isn’t a 127 but a Dreamie, and all it takes is the slight hiss of Donghyuck’s hydroboard as it weaves through the canals, skimming the surface with every sharp turn, a hiss and a hum and spray of water, for the red lights to flash and the sirens to ring. He delicately leans forward on his board, edging it faster and tighter around the corners of the waterways. He shifts his weight gentle as gossamer, kilo by kilo, distantly feels the adrenaline crackle in his spine but doesn’t panic. Panic kills balance, and if the odds are cruel for him to slip away, they’re even worse if he ends up in the canal. 

_ Take a breath, feel the core under the soles of your feet. There’s warmth. Take a breath, you’re blood and metal, one and the same. Take a breath. _

The government anti-grav tech is slick, Donghyuck knows, because Renjun never shuts up about wanting to get his hands on it. Sleek, black-lacquered bikes that float weightless in narrow alleys, a silent menace that turns on a tack and floats over water _ and _ cement. Donghyuck wanted to steal one for Renjun’s birthday, it’d make his day tearing it to shreds and tinkering with the pieces and turn them a pretty profit when he rebuilds it better. Jeno and Jaemin were already in on the gig and ready to fly, but the way the grav-bikes are closing ground on him he worries they might take him first. 

He takes a corner too hard, stumbles and feels the safety cuff around his ankle jerk him back with it’s magnetic tie to the board, and he ends up nearly throwing himself into a filthy brick wall. The grav-bikes creep closer and closer, the thermonuclear core that Renjun salivates over is going to be the thing that catches him, and _ fuck _ this is really not going great. If they catch him with forty-seven pills over the felony limit that’s jail time, and they’ll let him go for sure after seeing the steel tag in his ear engraved _ 127_, but not without taking a finger first. Or worse. 

There’s a zero-tolerance for stolen tech, it plunges to the negatives for mods, bodily or otherwise. They catch him with the smart wire he ripped off the SkyRail, his homemade board with the engine juiced up on lithium, the titanium implanted in his right shinbone to hold it together after the break, the electromagnetic piercings in his ears, his unlicensed RFID implant, his _ heart_... he’s done. That’s _ mandatory active interrogation methods _ for sure. 

_Torture_, he thinks, breath fluttering in his chest as he struggles to regain his bearings, that’s torture, and no gang ties, _ 127 _ or _ Dream _ or God himself, save you from MAIM. He shivers, thinks of Yuta’s bionic arm and Doyoung’s gut-deep aversion to masks that cover his face. For those who live, play and die in the flooded underground-- _ the NeoCity_, Taeyong christened it--there are no second chances, only fool’s gold to win and the blood price to pay. 

They won’t catch him though, they got the juice and the fresh metal, but Donghyuck has quicksilver agility, knows how to burn through the canals like he knows how to walk, he’s been doing it for just as long. _ Haechannie’s got moxie_, Taeil says after he runs a shipment across the city in the blindness of night with clean cops on the prowl. _ Hyung’s got moves_, Jisung tells him when he blusters their way into the ritzy nightclubs at the top of the hill: angel dust and cherry bombs lining their pockets. _ Hyuckie’s got me_, Mark murmurs in his ear as he tucks a steel baton into Donghyuck’s belt loops with long fingers and a grasping delicacy--it glints vicious in the dying light of dusk, and Donghyuck decides he likes the weight of it.

He spies a backstreet ahead, a flooded cranny more than anything, and it’ll be a tight fit and a real doozy of a risk. One wrong move and he’s smeared on the concrete with the cops on his back and his cherry bombs and smart tech lost to the water. 

Desperate, iron-tinged panic swells at the back of his throat as the narrow back-alley rapidly approaches, and he clenches his fists and swallows what he hopes isn’t blood. _ It’s too tight, it’s not happening. _

He makes a tight spin sideways to make the maneuver, and in the flash of light as his board scrapes against rusted iron railing--metal on metal kindling--there is a familiar face grinning sharp in the dark, government helmet pushed back over his forehead. Donghyuck’s heart plunges to the bottom of the canals, somewhere deep and muddy and unretrievable.

The last thing he hears as he hurtles towards the crack in the walls is the _ click click click _ of a taser wiring-on, and he knew his days were numbered and running low but that bastard promised him more than_ this_, promised him everything in return for what he gave and what he bled.

But it might all turn out fine like a dime in the end, because Donghyuck’s got moxie and moves and most of all Mark, and the one thing he and his board got on those grav-bikes is hard-won feline litheness. He bumps up the speed and closes his eyes.

_There’s only one way to find out--_

**Author's Note:**

> [moodboard](https://padlet.com/evybdyknwit/DoleurDEV)


End file.
